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Date:	Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:53:46 +0200
From:	Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject:	Re: untarring symlinks with ../ fails randomly
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On Apr 26 11:22, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 03:08:52PM +0000, Dan Grayson wrote:
> >(Re-posting yet again, didn't get through yesterday or today (?), this time
> >from a different account.)
> >
> >
> >Corinna,
> >
> >Debugging with gdb shows that "tar" is prepared for the possibility that
> >symbolic links don't work and that hard links will have to be used instead.
> >So, when it encounters a symbolic link, it creates a zero-length file with mode
> >0 as a placeholder, and it records the inode number of the new file.  That way
> >it can wait until all the regular files have been created, and then replace the
> >placeholder by a symbolic link, or if that doesn't work, by a hard link to the
> >existing file.  However, a tar file can contain multiple entries corresponding
> >to the same file name or path, so it may happen that the placeholder is no
> >longer present at the end, having been replaced by another file.  Hence, it
> >will only replace the placeholder if the inode number and the creation time are
> >unchanged.  But, under cygwin, the creation time may change gratuitously after
> >the creation of the file, at random!
> 
> Cygwin doesn't change the creation time gratuitously.  Sounds like BLODA to me.

Btw., POSIX st_ctime is not "creation time" but "change time".  It's the
timestamp of the last change to the file's metadata (inode content on
filesystems like ext2/3/4).
The "change time"  was always available in file info calls in the
native NT API, and it's available in the Win32 API since Windows Vista
(see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa364226%28v=VS.85%29.aspx)

Unfortunately Microsoft doesn't provide documentation on the resolution
of the "change time", only of the other timestamps, see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724290%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

If you're looking for the creation time, it's in st_birthtime.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Project Co-Leader          cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat

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